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[Continued from Part 1] On our first full day in Yingtan, we drove to Mama Zhu’s house, located in one of the little villages on the outskirts of the city. The village is surrounded by rice paddies, and we had to park on the main road and walk the narrow alleyways to Mama Zhu’s house. […]

We had an amazing trip to China a few weeks ago. One of our big goals for spending time in Asia this year was to travel to China at least once. As our time here progressed, however, we kind of lost sight of that goal. The kids have been doing very well in school, and […]

We’re pretty worn out from all the festivities, but here are the highlights from Lia’s sixth birthday…

On Friday we are going to China. That sentence is deceptively simple, and belies all of the conversations, decisions, emails, and errands that went into making it happen. Back in the winter of 2010, when we were deciding where to spend our first year of Operation Hejira, we toyed with doing an extended period in […]

Lia practising her Mandarin on the way home from school. With daily lessons and after-school tutoring, her Mandarin has progressed by leaps and bounds. She is now reading and writing dozens of characters, and in the video she’s reading from her lesson book. She adores her teacher and is very self-motivated; she’s even taking her […]